Garden Highlights July 1, 2013

Garden Highlights July 1, 2013

Just a few shots....

Some of the leek blooms, that are so pretty!

Some of the garden: 

 Can you see the twine?  The tomato plants are growing up the twine.

Some of the Blackberry Bushes:

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June 24-28th, 2013 SL- Core E- Week 30

June 24-28th, 2013 SL- Core E- Week 30

We completed week 30 of Core E this week.  But, we didn't manage to get through all the chapters we were suppose to get through--so I don't know if I should say "completed"!!!  But, next week we might catch up!

I spent Monday cleaning up our house and didn't get to spend much time on our lessons until late in the afternoon.  We had our yard sale on Fri. and Sat. and Giz and Grampy stayed for dinner.  Then Sunday we went to church and enjoyed our day of rest...in our fine mess!!!  It was hard to wait for Monday to get here so I could finally get to cleaning!  

 

Our lessons:

Bible:

Judges 2, 3, 4

Apologia: Who Is My Neighbor? Lesson 5: What Can I do For My Country?  pg's: 164-172

Language Arts:

All About Spelling 5:

Step 3: M,T,W,Th,F -passed 

IEW: Fix-It:

Week 20

Letter writting:

wrote Uncle Rick and cousin Allie

Science:

Apologia:Zoology 1: Flying Creatures: pg's: 101-107

we wrapped up the last bit on birds, and started a new section....on BATS!!!  Dd was very excited to learn more about bats!

Reader: 

Bruchko: The Astonishing True Story of a 19-Year-Old American, His Capture by the Motilone Indians and His Adventures... by Bruce Olson

Bruchko by Bruce Olson

Read Aloud during day:

Miracles on Maple Hill by Virginia Sorensen, Joe Krush and Beth Krush

Miracles On Maple Hill

Family RA's at night:

This old book is the version we found in a "FREE" pile at our library.  We are really enjoying it.  Imagine our surprise when we found out it is a Newbery Honor book!  The dialect is difficult for Dh to read, as the vocabulary is different than today's English; but it is fascinating to hear.

Tree of Freedom - Newbery Honor Books by Rebecca Caudill and Dorothy Bayley Morse

Tree of Freedom by Rebecca Caudill

When 13 year old Stephanie made the long trek from Carolina to Kentucky in the spring of 1780, she brought with her an apple seed. Even so had her Grandmother Linney carried an apple seed from France to Charleston. The seed that Stephanie nurtured in the wild Kentucky soil, the "tree of freedom" as she called it, was not merely a link with the past, but a symbol of the new way of life that the pioneering families meant to build in the fresh green land. More than just a story of homesteading, this is a warm and interesting study of character and family relationships. The numerous line drawings by Mrs. Morse pleasingly round out the picture of the seven Venables.

It Made You Think of Home: The Haunting Journal of Deward Barnes, CEF: 1916-1919 by Bruce Cane

It Made You Think of Home:The Haunting Tale of Deward Barnes by Bruce Cane  

Math:

MathUSee:Epsilon:23 A-F

Skip-Counting family this week---the wonderful 12 family! 2-3x each day.

Chopin

Composer of the week:

Frederic Francois Chopin

Meet the Great Composers Book 1 (Learning Link) by June Montgomery and Maurice Hison

Meet the Great Composers

Artist of the Week:

Michelangelo

Michelangelo (Getting to Know the World's Greatest Artists) by Mike Venezia

Getting to Know the Greatest Artists of the World by Venezia

World History Biographies: Michelangelo: The Young Artist Who Dreamed of Perfection (National Geographic World... by Philip Wilkinson

Michelangelo: The Young Artist Who Dreamed of Perfection by Phillip Wilkinson (Nat'l Geographic book) plus we looked at a lot of books I own that I bought in Florence, Italy while at the museums with Michelangelo's work.

Michelangelo by Marco Bussagli

Art:

Clay-Dd made a human head out of clay; well done

Odds:

Kindle game-Flags of the World: 4x this week

BrainPop, BrainPop, Jr. and BrainPop,UK.

daily

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June 17-21st, 2013 SL- Core E- Week 29 "A" LOW (Left-Over Week)

June 17-21st, 2013

 SL- Core E- Week 29 "A" LOW

(Left-Over Week)

Yard Sale Prep Week---and boy what a busy week!  We officially had this week as "off" and didn't count this as a week of doing lessons; but we did get some things done which I thought I'd put down.

I was busy, busy cleaning out closets and bins pulling out all the clothes Dd had out grown while Dd did a little bit of this and that--

Reader:

Completed: Half Magic

Completed: Return to Gone Away Lake

Family RA:

It Made You Think of Home: The Haunting Journal of Deward Barnes, CEF: 1916-1919 by Bruce Cane

1) It Made You Think of Home...by Bruce Cane

Tree of Freedom - Newbery Honor Books by Rebecca Caudill and Dorothy Bayley Morse

2)Tree of Freedom...by Rebecca Caudill

Music:

Lots of Piano this week

DVD's:

The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (Widescreen Theatrical Edition) Starring Elijah Wood, Ian Mckellen, Liv Tyler and Viggo Mortensen

Lord of the Ring's -The Two Towers

Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King Starring Elijah Wood, Ian Mckellen, Liv Tyler and Viggo Mortensen

Return of the King

VHS:

All Quiet on the Western Front Starring Louis Wolheim, Lew Ayres, John Wray and Arnold Lucy

All's Quiet on the Western Front

(We read the book as a family read aloud, and now watched the movie.)

Garden:

Dd learned how to use the metal bender and bent the poles to make frames for our garden.

Library Program:

We picked up Dd's friend and took both girls to the "Memory Box" program at the library.  Both girls painted LOTR motifs on their boxes.  They had a good time at the event.  

Add-in books:

The Lightning Thief: The Graphic Novel (Percy Jackson & the Olympians, Book 1) by Rick Riordan, Robert Venditti, Jose Villarrubia and Attila Futaki

Walks:

We fit in a walk/bike around our 2 ponds this week.

Dd bending steel for the garden June 17th, 2013

Dd bending steel for the garden 

June 17th, 2013

What are the braces for, you ask?:

The plan is tie twine across each frame horizontally.  Each tomato plant will have a twine rope tie that will come down to it vertically to stabilize it.  Dh found this set up in one of his many gardening books, and this is suppose to be a great way to grow tomato plants....so we will try it out and see for ourselves how successful this method proves to be.  Stay tuned for new pictures with twine demonstrating how it is to be done!!!  This is only step 2, step 1 was buying the pipe and bending the pipe.

You see who does all the work in our home!

The onions are blooming!  They are really so beautiful!

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Garden Pix June 15, 2013

Garden Pix (and some birds joined in too)  June 15-ish, 2013

We have already worked in the garden and built new things up in there since Saturday--so things have changed already!  I'll post those pictures later.  But, here is what the garden looked like on Saturday.  Saturday I took many of the sunflowers out of our garden and planted them in our backyard.  I planted them in groupings, set up against the fence, so they could lean up against the fence for support (with the help of some twine if needed).  I love growing the sunflowers and watching the finches eat the seeds.  Things are coming along, and I am enjoying my backyard the most out of all the years I've lived here.  Our backyard finally has enough trees, bushes, plants, flowers, and birds for me to feel 'at home'....finally!

3 birds

 The other cool thing about our backyard is the 2 ponds to the left--we have Blue Herons that live there.  I saw one creep up and hunt on Saturday.  It was very interesting to see it catch a frog.  Mallard ducks, geese, green herons, and the Blue Heron live there.

 These onion blooms are my FAVORITE right now!!!  Just so beautifully shaped!

 This is the whole "Left Side".

This is the WHOLE garden!

This is the "Right Side"

We planted  2 rows of Kohlarobi, 2 rows of Fennel, and 3 rows of 1 type of Giant Bib lettuce, and 3 rows of Salad Bowl lettuce.  You can't see, but 6 ft. to the left I planted 2 rows of leeks.

 Our Blackberry bushes had branched out and grew off shoots, so we took those off shoots and on Saturday we started 2 new Blackberry Gardens, in 2 different locations. This spot had 1 Blackberry plant, now it has 6 or 7 plants in a line---you can't see the 3 small ones on the left of the big plant very well in this picture.  The birds really like eating our berries, so maybe if we have a lot of plants in various places we will stand a chance at eating more ourselves!!

 These were those 5 tomatoes that the rabbit had eaten the bottom 2 so much that you could barely see them--now you can see where the plants are much better!  Plus the safety screens we set up!

This year we planted 6 new asparagus plants and 5 have sprouted up! We had planted 2 last year (Sophie dug 1 up and 1 safely made it to this year).  We devised a safety net around them to keep them safe until we can build another screen.  Can you see the sprouts?

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Papilio polyxenes

Papilio polyxenes
The (eastern) black swallowtail (Papilio polyxenes), also called the American swallowtail or parsnip swallowtail
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Papilio_polyxenes

 After our tea party friend had given me 3 lovely black swallowtail caterpillars, I found I already had many on the parsnip plants I had pulled up and put in my compost!!!!!  I quickly pulled out the dried up plants from the compost.  Then I tried to rescue as many caterpillars as I could!  I have 4 fennel plants in 3 different locations in my backyard and some small parsnips plants by the blackberry bushes.  The homeless insects were soon placed in new lodgings.

 In front of the butterfly bush, I planted 2 fennel plants---and placed some of the black swallowtail caterpillars there.

In front of the 2 newly transplanted (from the front yard to the back yard) roses, are 2 fennel plants.  The 3 caterpillars from my friend quickly ate the fennel off one of the plants, so I had to move them to the parsnip plants by my blackberry bushes where they couldn't do so much damage so quickly!  They were very big caterpillars and had an appetite to match!  You can see the big parsnip plants that I pulled out of the compost pile laying in front of the garden.  I figured if there were any caterpillars that I missed they could have a chance to walk to the fennel plants on their own.

Out in our garden beside our celery is one last fennel plant.  I knew the butterflies might remember from last  year that we had fennel out in the garden, so I wanted one out there too.  I tried to strategically place the fennel around our yard in places where the butterflies would be sure to see it (and lay their eggs!).  I placed it by our Butterfly Bush, our roses, and in our garden.  And here they had already laid their eggs on our parsnip plants!!! Funny!  



I remember at 11 years of age, my Dad bought me chickens, ducks, and turkeys to raise that summer.  Well, I might not be able to do that for my Dd---but at least she can raise butterflies!!!  I'm sure she would MUCH rather the fowl!  But, this is the best I can do in a neighborhood.  Here are some pictures from Wikipedia to see the specific type we have in abundance.  I also found a new chrysalis on our fence too!  I'm tempted to bring it in to watch it hatch....hmmm.

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  Laying eggs on parsley

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  Eggs on parsley

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  First instar caterpillar in northeast Georgia

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  Late-instar caterpillar (without spikes) soon ready to pupate

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  Osmeterium visible after slight provocation

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  Greenish-brown chrysalis

Black swallowtail
Male
Female
Scientific classification
Kingdom:	Animalia
Phylum:	Arthropoda
Class:	Insecta
Order:	Lepidoptera
Family:	Papilionidae
Tribe:	Papilionini
Genus:	Papilio
Species:	P. polyxenes		The black swallowtail has a wingspan of 8 to 11 cm (3.1 to 4.3 in). The upper surface of the wings is mostly black. On the inner edge of the hindwing is a black spot centered in larger orange spot. A male of this species has a yellow band near edge of wings; a female has row of yellow spots. The hindwing of the female has an iridescent blue band. In the southwestern United States, yellow forms predominate in the subspecies Papilio polyxenes coloro. After mating, small, yellow eggs are laid, typically on plants from the carrot family, Apiaceae, including dill, fennel, Queen Anne's lace, parsley, and golden alexanders. They are also found eating rue and bishop's weed. First instar larvae grow to about 1.5 cm (0.59 in) long and resemble bird droppings. They are dark black with a white band in the middle and have spikes, with a light brown-orange ring at the base of each of the spikes in the dark region (spikes are white on the white band). Later instars grow to about 5 cm (2.0 in) and are green and black banded with yellow spots around every second black band. They have short, black spikes around some of the black bands, although these tend to disappear as the larva nears pupation.  The black swallowtail caterpillar has an orange "forked gland", called the osmeterium. When in danger, the osmeterium, which looks like a snake's tongue, everts and releases a foul smell to repel predators. Black swallowtail chrysalis The pupae may be green or brown, but not depending on surroundings or the background on which they have pupated. The color of the chrysalis is determined by a local genetic balance that ensures the majority of pupae will blend in.[2]